What is and isn't Compostable? - Home Compost Results

What is and isn’t Compostable? – Home Compost Results

In this article, co-owner Lucinda takes us through the findings of her latest compost bin, discussing items that may not break down in a traditional home compost cycle. She talks about the compostability of these items, and what she’ll be doing next to ensure they don’t end up in the traditional waste stream. Some great insight into what can be accomplished with your own compost system!

We are one of those families that believes this is the case, and so our compost gets the lot. On top of the usual food scraps, we throw in natural fibre clothing, straw hats, meat scraps, hair, cotton buds, old feather down quilts, cardboard and even disposable cotton menstrual pads.

But what is the actual end result? As I started to dig out our compost the other day, ready to spread it around the garden, I started discovering some residual items, and thought I’d share them with you. Our compost results are not perfect – but we are still thrilled with how much we CAN successfully compost.

Here’s one of our beautiful compost bins. We have three, so once one is filled, we can stop adding and give it time for the worms to break it all down.

The first discovery – a wooden spoon. Wood is of course biodegradable over time, but not officially ‘home compostable’ because it does not break down in a typical composting time frame. We knew this, it doesn’t both us and I just fish it out and chuck it back in for the next round – it is on the way to breaking down already.

Next item was the plastic stick from a cotton ear bud. We usually only ever use (and compost) the bamboo and cotton ones, of which there is no sign in the compost. At one point we inherited a box of plastic sticked ones, and this one has obviously slipped through. All the cotton is gone, leaving the indestructible stick.

Here’s one that surprised me, composted bin bags that we collect our scraps in. I had thought this would all be gone at the same rate as the food scraps, but obviously not. It is ‘almost’ composted and more time would surely do it, so I can live with it – like the wooden spoon and mango seed, back in it goes.

Egg shells go into the same basket – they just need more time that other things to compost. In the case of the eggshells, I am happy to just add the compost with them in it, to the garden beds as is.

This one was an eye opener for us – it took us ages to work out what it actually was. We finally figured out it is remains of palm leaf plates. Leaf is obviously a biodegradable material, but as this shows, doesn’t biodegrade very fast. It’s ended up being more like a mulch that you could lay around your plants. My guess is that the fibre is quite touch (a bit like coconut husks) and not so easily edible by microorganisms, which means it will take a lot longer to be turned into dirt. Again, I’m not bothered by it and will either fish it out and use it as mulch, or just leave it in for the next round.

Here is a bone – probably leave that in the compost when I lay it in the garden. It’s no different to a rock being in the garden.

This one has been fascinating for me. With three women in the house, we’ve always kept a good stock of Natracare pads, which are completely plastic free, and composted them (can’t see the difference between composting pads and using blood and bone, which I also use).

Recently, we started trialling Tsuno pads, which are ethically amazing – they are a social enterprise that gives 50% of profits to charities focused on empowering women, in partnership with ‘One Girl’. Their pads are individually packed in a ‘biodegradable plastic sleeve’, but from what I can see, these are not compostable at all. In contrast to the partial breakdown of the green compostable bin bags, I found both wrappers for the pads, and the absorbent part of the pad in the compost. The absorbent part of the pads would have broken down except that they were surrounded in this ‘biodegradable film’ – this is the same issue as can happen when you try to compost ‘biodegradable disposable’ nappies. One option is to tear open the nappy/pad to compost the absorbent inner and dispose of the outer. But for us – we’ll just go back to only choosing Natracare, of which there is not one trace in my compost.

And last but not least – what happens when you compost natural fibre material thing – clothing, hats, cloth etc? Often, you’ll be left with just the synthetic thread that was used to hold it together.

Here’s one I found in the compost.

And for my very favourite picture last – here is all that is left of a pair of pants that we added to the compost – just the waist band, zip and inner pockets, which were obviously synthetic. I love how every other part of them has just disappeared and will now be nourishing my veggies!